A language corpus is a searchable collection of electronically stored texts and is a valuable tool for anybody working with language. By searching a corpus you gain insight into how language is really used. A corpus differs from a dictionary in that it is exclusively an interactive tool allowing you to explore language in context. The corpus returns hits, indicating how words are used in context instead of giving you a rigid definition.

The Oslo Interactive English Corpus (OIEC) is a 7-million-word monolingual English language corpus comprising texts mainly from the 20th century (with a few texts from the 21st century). The corpus includes fictional and non-fictional texts in addition to political speeches and film scripts from the 1980s and 1990s. The major contribution comes from UK and US sources, but texts from other English-speaking countries are also included.

Although the texts in the OIE Corpus have been written by native speakers of English you should be aware that not all native usage is grammatically "correct" according to the grammatical rules for standard English. It is therefore crucial that you take time to assess the corpus results before answering the questions. In most cases the corpus gives a good indication whether an expression is acceptable or not. However, it is important to be critical; use the corpus as a resource and guideline rather than a key to what is right or wrong.

Below you will find a guide to the various aspects of the OIE Corpus; The Corpus search hints explain how to perform various searches in the corpus. The Corpus search results give you some hints as how to interpret the results returned by the corpus. Finally, the OIE Corpus Header gives you information about the texts and text codes used in the corpus.